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Full-Text Articles in History
Miraculous Monstrosity: Birth And Female Sexuality In The Illuminated Scivias And Cloisters Apocalypse, Jenna M. Mckellips
Miraculous Monstrosity: Birth And Female Sexuality In The Illuminated Scivias And Cloisters Apocalypse, Jenna M. Mckellips
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
This paper compares the illuminations in two medieval apocalypses, the Cloisters Apocalypse and Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias, to inspect their similar constructions of female sexuality, motherhood, and monstrosity. It first analyzes the monstrosity of female sexual organs found in Hildegard’s portrayal of the Church and the Mother of the Antichrist. The paper then goes on to consider the uncanny slippage between images of birth and death in the Cloisters’s depiction of John and the Woman of Revelation 12. Ultimately, the paper not only explores the monstrosity of female bodies in apocalyptic manuscripts, but also concludes that medieval women’s …
The War Of The Two Jeannes And The Role Of The Duchess In Lordship In The Fourteenth Century, Katrin E. Sjursen
The War Of The Two Jeannes And The Role Of The Duchess In Lordship In The Fourteenth Century, Katrin E. Sjursen
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
In the mid-fourteenth century, two women headed opposing parties in a civil war for control of the duchy of Brittany in France. Conventional scholarship explains their involvement in politics and warfare as exceptions possible only during emergencies. Contemporary chronicles and the letters of the two women themselves, however, tell another story, one in which these two women participated in politics and warfare even before their husbands entered captivity. Their participation makes sense if we recognize that medieval society understood lordship as a form of shared governance performed by a noble couple. While separate roles did exist for the husband and …
Virgin'a End: The Suppression Of The York Marian Pageants, Andrea R. Harbin
Virgin'a End: The Suppression Of The York Marian Pageants, Andrea R. Harbin
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
With the rise of the Reformation in England, we see the abolishment of much of the religious drama of the late Middle Ages. The first pageants in York to fall victim to this were the pageants about Mary, which were produced by the weavers', drapers', and hostellers' guilds. While the content of the Marian pageants themselves made them a target of Reformational ire, public sentiment was still on the side of the Corpus Christi Play as a whole. Yet the guilds that produced the Marian plays were not as powerful as they had once been. All three of these trades …